A Southeast Side alderman and a labor union are blasting Mayor Rahm Emanuel's latest attempt to privatize the languishing Port of Chicago, saying the city instead should keep public control and spend money to modernize it.

Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza, 10th, and union officials are planning to attend Friday's meeting of the Illinois International Port District, where the board of directors is set to discuss a "master lease" of the port.

"We can't give away another asset," said Sadlowski Garza, a union-allied alderman who represents the port and nearby Hegewisch neighborhood on the City Council.

Emanuel spokesman Grant Klinzman said the board is simply holding a closed-door session to get an update on a request for proposals it put out a year ago. The board asked for plans from "a private-sector partner to acquire tenants, support the growth of existing tenants and/or bring about facility improvements that enable commercial growth, including job creation and greater economic activity in the surrounding area."

Klinzman declined to discuss specifics of the attempt to find a company to take over the port, citing the need for privacy in such talks. But he said the board won't be voting on a privatization plan Friday. "They've made no secret about their interest in doing this," Klinzman said of the board's effort to reach some kind of public-private partnership agreement to run the port.

Sadlowski Garza said it doesn't make sense to wait for the port board to come forward with a package from a bidder, arguing there's no proposal that would be better for the city than keeping public control of the port and making investments in modernizing it.

Also taking a dim view of the idea was Raymond Sierra, vice president of the executive council of the International Longshoremen's Association. Sierra, whose members could lose out if a private operator turned to cheaper nonunion labor at the port, said turning over it would be shortsighted.

"Privatization is nothing but a lack of responsibility from elected officials who have been appointed to operate a port," Sierra said. "Corporations, foreign entities come in and lease parcels for short and long terms, and they leave things a mess, in a deplorable state."

Clayton Harris III, who the board hired as executive director at the port district, could not be reached for comment. Nor could Michael Forde, the Emanuel-appointed chairman of the port board.

The ongoing attempt to find a company to run the port comes after the Denver-based Broe Group broke off talks with the district in 2013 to take over.

Emanuel had held a rare Sunday news conference months earlier to announce the privatization, saying "we will reinvigorate a critical asset for our city in the area of transportation and trade," only to see it fall through after the Broe Group asked for what the port district called "critical changes in terms."

The mayor has suffered a series of setbacks in his aggressive attempts to privatize or commercialize public assets.

He pulled the plug in September 2013 on the possibility of a long-term lease of Midway Airport after the number of bidders dropped to one.

And he reorganized his much-ballyhooed Infrastructure Trust last year after it failed to reach the status he gave it as "the breakout strategy for the city" when he launched it in 2012 with former President Bill Clinton as a way to privately bankroll big-ticket public works projects during an era of shrinking federal funding and dwindling state resources.